No. 8 Irish wear down Cincinnati

Notre Dame's Becca Bruszewski goes in for a layup against Cincinnati's Kayla Cook. For more photos, visit SouthBend Tribune.com.

SOUTH BEND -- As halftime talks go, this one must have been off the Richter Scale.

Not for the thunder that accompanied the talk, but the thunder it produced in its aftermath.

Notre Dame shook off a sluggish first half and slugged Cincinnati with 21 consecutive points to start off the second half, rolling to a 66-48 victory in Big East Conference women's college basketball action before a sellout crowd (9,149) at Purcell Pavilion on senior night.

No. 8 Notre Dame (24-5 overall, 13-2 Big East) heads to Chicago to close out the regular season with a showdown against No. 7 DePaul. Cincinnati (8-19, 1-14), hampered by injuries and only dressing seven players, suffered its 13th loss in a row.

"Well, it wasn't exactly the game we wanted to play heading into the game at DePaul," Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said. "I thought we had a great spurt in the beginning of the second half. We came out and played our game. I thought our starters looked really sharp during that time.

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"Certainly, the emotion of senior day, I think, really got to us early on. I think it got to people other than the seniors, apparently. It was a difficult game to play. We're at that point in the season where we need to continue to be intense and focused, and, offensively, we did not do that today."

Devereaux Peters turned in a double-double for the Irish with 12 points and 10 rebounds. The double-double was Peters' seventh of the season and eighth of her career.

Unleashing a fierce defensive effort to open the second half, Notre Dame forced seven turnovers in the Bearcats' first eight possessions. The Irish cranked up their offense, reeling off a 21-0 run over the first 6:55 of the second half. Cincinnati's Tiffany Turner finally broke the iceberg of a 12-possession drought with a layup at the 13:05 mark.

McGraw said that her halftime talk wasn't a fire-breathing, peel-the-paint-off-the-walls tirade.

"I was disappointed, but I thought they were, too," McGraw said. "I didn't feel the need to really scream at all. I thought we just talked about what we needed to do, and then they went out and did it. That's a mature group.

"I felt better having not screamed when we were making the 21-0 run than had I screamed at them. I wouldn't have felt as good."

Peters said that nobody needed to tell the Irish that their first half was below standard.

"We already knew we were playing terribly," Peters said. "We knew what we had to change. She came in at halftime and told us a few specifics, but it was something we already knew.

"Everybody is so competitive on this team, we know what we have to do, and we'll fix it on our own, even if the coaches don't say anything. We want to fix it and be better every game. When we play like that, we know everybody is going to push it and come back in the second half and get back to how we normally play."

Notre Dame struggled in the first half but opened up a 28-11 lead, only to see Cincinnati go on a 9-0 run and close the gap to 28-20 at halftime. Cincinnati's Bjonee Reaves fired up a one-handed desperation 3 at the buzzer for the final points of the first half.

Notre Dame connected on its first three shots of the game, but then the Irish struggled. Notre Dame went through a stretch in which it only hit one of nine shots, committed six turnovers, but did hit four of four free throws.

Kayla Cook led Cincinnati with 18 points.

"The message at halftime was that we were in the game, and don't be surprised by it," Cincinnati coach Jamelle Elliott said. "Being down eight points at halftime against probably the second-best passing team that we have faced all year, I was surprised, but I didn't tell my team that.

"I wanted them to build on that and come out in the second half with that same confidence that we ended the first half with (a 9-0 run). Obviously, Notre Dame continued to press us, and I think at the beginning of the second half that pressure wore us down a bit. We turned the ball over 28 times, and you can't do that against a team like Notre Dame and expect to be in the ball game, which we weren't at the end."